to love, a home to guard, and who had some share in making the laws which they were called upon to obey.  But the Greek armies of Macedonia, Egypt, and Syria were made up either of natives who bowed their necks in slavery, or of mercenaries who made war their trade and rioted in its lawlessness; both of whom felt that they had little to gain from victory, and nothing to lose by a change of masters.  Moreover, the warlike skill of the Romans was far greater than any that had yet been brought against the Greeks.  It had lately been improved in their wars with Hannibal, the great master of that science.  They saw that the phalanx could use its whole strength only on a plain; that a wood, a bog, a hill, or a river were difficulties which this close body of men could not always overcome.  A charge or a retreat equally lessened its force; the phalanx was meant to stand the charge of others.  The Romans, therefore, chose their own time and their own ground; they loosened their ranks and widened their front, avoided the charge, and attacked the Greeks at the side and in the rear; and the fatal discovery was at last made that the Macedonian phalanx was not unconquerable, and that closed ranks were only strong against barbarians.  This news must have been heard by every statesman of Egypt and the East with alarm; the ’Romans were now their equals, and were soon to be their masters.

But to return to Egypt.  It was, as we have seen, a country governed by men of a foreign race.  Neither the poor who tilled the land, nor the rich who owned the estates, had any share in the government.  They had no public duty except to pay taxes to their Greek masters, who walked among them as superior beings, marked out for fitness to rule by greater skill in the arts both of war and peace.  The Greeks by their arms, or rather by their military discipline, had enforced obedience for one hundred and fifty years; and as they had at the same time checked lawless violence, made life and property safe, and left industry to enjoy a large share of its own earnings, this obedience had been for the most part granted to them willingly.  They had even trusted the Egyptians with arms.  But none are able to command unless they are at the same time able to obey.  The Alexandrians were now almost in rebellion against their young king and his ministers; and the Greek government no longer gave the usual advantages in return for the obedience which it tyrannically enforced.  Confusion increased each year during the childhood of the fifth Ptolemy, to whom Alexandrian flattery gave the title of Epiphanes, or The Illustrious.  The Egyptian phalanx had in the last reign shown signs of disobedience, and at length it broke out in open rebellion.  The discontented party strengthened themselves in the Busirite nome, in the middle of the Delta, and fortified the city of Lycopolis against the government; and a large supply of arms and warlike stores which they there got together proved the length of time that they had